Gravity Giants - leading my team to the top

[Delial]

Guys, I'm desesperate.
I'm going through what we can call the "are my players' dumb or what" phase. I feel like quitting this game forever, going to Pentagonia to raise sheeps for the rest of my life.

Let me go back a bit. After a very successful first season with Sassuolo (2nd in Serie A with no transfers), I move to Atalanta in order to have money for my ambitions. I buy a lot of players but I keep my starting 11 with players that were already here for a while. Except my favourite Maxime Lopez as a Regista. On loan in Sassuolo, I made him my star player: best player of the season with Sassuolo, bought 30M with Atalanta, best player of the season with Atalanta. We fought for the title until the last second and I still don't understand why I did not succeed because I had the same amount of points as Roma did, more goals scored, more wins but also more defeats so that might be it. Anyway, I was very hopeful for the 2nd season with Atalanta because I had a lot of very talented player in my team to play beautiful football.

During the summer transfer window I lost my front 4, so I had to buy a new one. Younger, more talented, more suited to what I wanted. I knew that changing my team that much might f*cked my team cohesion, but I wasn't expecting that.

Since then, I'm living a nightmare. Ok, I'm 3rd in the Serie A, still in course for the title. I finished 3rd of my CL group (behind Liverpool and Barcelona so... not a shame). But the way my team plays is aweful. We are defensively pretty sound but nothing happens upfront. I feel like my results are "good" because we have very good players, not because we have a very good team. Most of my goals are from corners, penalties, late goals because the opponent is tired, set pieces... And most of it, it's like my players don't know how to play football at all. Passes directly out of the pitch, a pressing forward as good as Belotti who is not fighting AT ALL for any balls... I don't get it.

So I'm in the middle of the season, I can make things better in order to save the day and to prepare for the next season. Blank space, we're starting from scratch!

 

Here is my tactic. Just to let you know that I read the forum for many years now, and I try to build something following tactic geniuses like @Experienced Defender, @Ö-zil to the Arsenal!, @Rashidi and @Cleon.

I want to control possession "with intent". I don't want possession for the sake of it, it's just that I'm stressed when I don't have the ball. I don't know how I survived to the last World Cup being french but hell, the world seems a safer place when you have the ball. I don't want my team to do complicate things, I want to play positive, nice simple football. We have a very good team, I just want to beat pretty easily weaker teams and to annoy bigger teams. I don't want my players to do complicate things, I really want them to be clever. Both of my wingers have "Sit narrower" and my 10 has "Roam from position", "Move into channels, "take more risks".

I have a split block for the pressing. I want that my PF and my AMR to be the main scorer of the team, my AML to be an assists machine and my 10 to be a mix of all of this.

My best player is Maxime Lopez. I play him as a Regista, he is a beast in this role. Still the 2nd best player of the season despite poor performances.

I also have Lisandro Martinez. And I'm struggling with him. Ideally, I would to form an incredible double pivot with Lopez as they are both technically gifted, with very good vision and Martinez also have very good defending attributes. But when I put them, I feel like Martinez as a HB is sucking the lifeblood of Lopez, making him useless. I am expecting that Martinez as a HB to recycle possession and to organise the game from deep with long passes for my forward or short passes to Lopez to allow him to mayhem the defence.

 

You got me, I have gold in my hands and I don't really know what to do with them. I will keep this thread updated regularly to let you know how things are going but I'm definitely open to suggestions.I don't really want to play another formation as the 4231 DM because it allows me to play with Lopez as a Regista. And I really like the double pivot behind a front four.

 

Shout!

[Bigshow1]

Have you tried swapping out a few roles? Maybe Belmonte to an Anchorman and then switch Ramos to attack and Skov Olsen to a support so he's driving from a bit deeper.

[Justified]

The way you want Lisandro Martinez to play is not the HB role. I'd say you're looking at a bog standard Defensive midfielder.

[Delial]

Just had the time to play one game, away against Hellas Verona, 4-0 for me without several of my usual starting players, pretty happy with what I saw but the opposition was weak.

Il y a 8 heures, Bigshow1 a dit :

Have you tried swapping out a few roles? Maybe Belmonte to an Anchorman and then switch Ramos to attack and Skov Olsen to a support so he's driving from a bit deeper.

I tried Belmonte as an Anchorman and he played very well! I think I will keep it that way.

Il y a 6 heures, Justified a dit :

The way you want Lisandro Martinez to play is not the HB role. I'd say you're looking at a bog standard Defensive midfielder.

Yeah, it's possible. I feel like wasting his abilities by setting him as CD but for now, this is where he performs the best.

[VinceLombardi]

10 hours ago, Delial said:

I don't really want to play another formation as the 4231 DM because it allows me to play with Lopez as a Regista. And I really like the double pivot behind a front four.

A Regista isn't really a "pivot" role. They tend to get too far up field. Pivots need to stay out of the thick of it and stay open for a safe backpass.

My favorite double pivot is 2 DM(s) with "hold position". They both stay back and screen the defense while staying free to recycle possession.

If you want to keep Lopez in the Regista role, flip him with Martinez and play Martinez as a DLP(d). With the IW(s) and AMC(s) there is not any space on the left for the Regista to exploit and run into. But on the right, the IW(a) gets forward more aggressively and will leave space behind him for the Regista. It will also help support him for through passes and similar. 

 

 

[Delial]

il y a 22 minutes, VinceLombardi a dit :

A Regista isn't really a "pivot" role. They tend to get too far up field. Pivots need to stay out of the thick of it and stay open for a safe backpass.

My favorite double pivot is 2 DM(s) with "hold position". They both stay back and screen the defense while staying free to recycle possession.

If you want to keep Lopez in the Regista role, flip him with Martinez and play Martinez as a DLP(d). With the IW(s) and AMC(s) there is not any space on the left for the Regista to exploit and run into. But on the right, the IW(a) gets forward more aggressively and will leave space behind him for the Regista. It will also help support him for through passes and similar. 

 

 

Thanks mate for the advice. I thought about playing Martinez as a DLP(d) but next to a Regista, who is also a playmaker, won't they walk on each other?

[VinceLombardi]

It shouldn't. Ball magnet/playmaker roles aren't as hard coded as they were in say '16. If you find it's a problem, just go with a DM(d) role. 

[Experienced Defender]

10 hours ago, Delial said:

Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to read your entire opening post, so I'll for now have to focus on your tactic exclusively.

The issue I immediately noticed is on the left side of your setup: an attacking FB behind a regista. All you need to do is just swap the sides of the regista and HB. Like this:

       HB    REG

FBat                   WBsu

See how small a tweak sometimes needs to be for better balance. 

Up front, potentially problematic can be the combo of PF on attack and IF on attack. Instead, you can either switch the PFat to DLFat or IFat to IWat or Wat. 

But an even better idea (tweak) would actually be swapping the AMR's and AMC's respective duties - AM on attack & IF on support.

So the setup would then look like this:

PFat

IWsu            AMat             IFsu

 

HB     REG

FBat         CDde   CDde    WBsu

In terms of instructions, I think you are using more than necessary in possession. Start with fewer. I would retain only the shorter passing and - possibly but not necessarily - play out of defence. No need for overcomplication, especially as your formation (deep 4231) is not optimal for (too much) possession-based styles. 

[Delial]

Thanks everyone for your advice!

We're going much better during the second half of the season. But we are struggling away. I like the way we play but we are to weak on defense or not efficient enough upfront. I play with the same tactic home and away so I assume that it's the reason why we're having hard times to grab points away.

Here's how the tactic looks like now:

 

Any advice to be more efficient?

[frukox]

If they attack you with numbers you need highly technical players to move the ball to the front. If you don't have the personnel, personally I would adopt a fast-transition style to exploit the space they left during their transitions. So for an away game you can go for something like this:

                   PF(A)

IW(A)         AM(S)       IF(S)

              A     DLP(S)

WB(S)  CD(D)   CD(D)  FB(A)

                    SK(S)

 

[Experienced Defender]

7 hours ago, Delial said:

 

7 hours ago, Delial said:

We're going much better during the second half of the season. But we are struggling away. I like the way we play but we are to weak on defense or not efficient enough upfront. I play with the same tactic home and away so I assume that it's the reason why we're having hard times to grab points away

If you are struggling in away games only, the first thing I would suggest is lowering the LOE a notch (standard instead of higher) and removing the Prevent short GKD. 

Switching passing to standard (default) as well as removing the Play out of defence (especially as you already have distribution to CBs turned on) are another 2 tweaks you may consider in those away matches. 

In any case, the 3rd place in the Serie looks like a very good achievement for Atalanta, so I would be wary of making any big changes.

[Delial]

So I finished my second season at Atalanta at a well deserved 3rd place. I say well deserved because, even if we could have won the title by winning our last game, it wouldn't be something really fair regarding how we played. Anyway, no big changes during the mercato. I needed a new left side: Goosens wasn't playing that good with me, so when Leipzig came with 50M, I didn't hesitate. I bought Aaron Martin for 10M and a young Bulgarian for 3M and they are both already playing much better than Goosens. I had the opportunity to steal Ajer from Leicester for less than 30M, again, no hesitation here.

I tweaked my tactic a little. Even if we were pretty solid defensively, I found that we were too exposed on the wings when the opponent started from the back. So I tried to get my team more compact. Here it is now:

Skov Olsen was my best scorer last year but wasn't that influent during the build up so I tweaked his role to be Raumdeuter-like on the right wing. He is even more efficient now.

We are very solid right now but we don't score enough IMHO. Let me show you my last game, but it's the same for every game. We dominate a lot, loads of shoots, most of them on sight but we don't score. A bit frustrating. Any advice to spice things up a bit?

 

[Gegenklaus]

Imo manage you expectation. All of the world's teams would give their left arm if it meant winning 2-0 each game.  You obviously got something good working. And that shot on target/ratio is pretty good.