Feedback on my two formations

[Barnetfan]

 Need help seeing where I'm going wrong with these two formations.

 

The First tactic (4-1-2-2-1) - This is my home tactic and against inferior opposition. Essentially what I am aiming for with this formation is to dictate play, but not where its easy for the other team to put a low block and stop us quite easily, I want my striker to score the goals. What seems to be happening is what usually happens, I have about 25 shots, 6 on target with 60% possession and score 0. They then score with their first attack. In terms with of PI I have not touched these as I believe it complicates the tactics. The RW doesn't seem to have a good game rating wise, whoever I play there and my centre midfield attack player seems to score the majority of my goals. I had to change my striker to an f9 as he was essentially contributing the square root of you know what. He seems to be involved a lot more as a f9 but never looks like scoring.

The second tactic (4-4-1-1) - This is my away tactic, I predominantly want to invite teams on, playing quite tight and then explode on the counter attack with my striker playing off the shoulder. The problem I have with this tactic is that I'm nowhere near as solid as I would like defensively and teams seem to be able to cut me open quite easily. Creating guilt edge chances is quite good, I'll get about 6 chances a game and 4 or 5 them are good chances.

 

 

[Experienced Defender]

6 hours ago, Barnetfan said:

Need help seeing where I'm going wrong with these two formations

The first and most obvious problem (IMHO) is a needlessly big difference between your 2 tactics. Not just that you use different formations - which is okay if they are analogous - but you also made a huge mentality change (from positive to cautious), which itself is a great change due to the impact of the mentality on all other instructions. 

The 2nd tactic is very unsound defensively, primarily due to a quite risky setup of roles and duties (both wide midfielders on attack duty + both players on the left flank on attack duty + not a single holding CM). You probably thought that the cautious mentality will automatically make you solid defensively, but that's not what the mentality is about. 

In fact, your first tactic looks more solid defensively even though it employs a considerably higher team mentality (positive). I don't say that it has no weaknesses - it does - but is at least better balanced than the other one.

Quick advice: get rid of the second (4411) tactic and work on improving the first (4123 wide) one, because it needs just a couple of tweaks to become pretty solid. 

[Barnetfan]

Thanks for the feedback. First tactic what would you change?

Edited April 2, 2020 by Barnetfan

[Experienced Defender]

48 minutes ago, Barnetfan said:

First tactic what would you change?

I personally would tone the pressing urgency down to default and would be also careful with the Prevent short GKD. Counter-press is always potenitally risky, so I would look to apply it only situiationally and with caution.

In transition, I would only add Distribution to FBs (along with CBs), so that the keeper would have more options available (simply because it's the safer option).

In possession, using fairly narrow width and focus through the middle together can create a tactical overkill and thus needlessly limit your players' attacking options. So I would remove them both and maybe only occasionally use just one of them as an in-match tweak (based on what I observe during a particular match).

Other possible tweaks would depend on your team's strengths and weaknesses and/or certain in-match situations.

In terms of roles and duties, there are 2 potential changes I would consider, and both pertain to the left side. One is this:

              F9

IWat

       CAR

WBsu

And the other is this:

             DLFat

IWsu

      CAR

FBat