Advice on 3-3-2-2 (352) formation

[MrWhite09]

Hey, I'm looking for some guidance on how to set up a positive 3-5-2 formation for my Inter team. Its a new save and I haven't tried this formation before on FM21, but it suits the players,  and it's mainly the midfield roles and TI's I think I'm struggling with to get the balance right. It may just be me, but I do feel the front 2 aren't getting enough support and are being left too much to themselves. I did choose 'focus play through the middle' as at times it seemed every move ended up with WBs running into dead-ends.

Does anyone have any experience or advice on this formation and how best to set up the TI's? The inspiration for this is more how Lazio play than Inter as from what I've seen they generally play more positive, attacking, possession football than Inter do of late under Conte

formation

 

[Experienced Defender]

You opted for a very bottom-heavy formation, which suits defensive styles of football much more than attack-minded ones (whether possession-minded or based on fast transitions). I would use this formation if I wanted to play a catenaccio (for example), but your choice of roles as well as instructions suggests it's not what you want. Right?

Anyway, the Prevent short GK distribution makes little sense and is likely to be fairly ineffective when you have less than 3 players up front (preferably 4). And given that you have only 2, I would advise against using it. 

[MrWhite09]

57 minutes ago, Experienced Defender said:

You opted for a very bottom-heavy formation, which suits defensive styles of football much more than attack-minded ones (whether possession-minded or based on fast transitions). I would use this formation if I wanted to play a catenaccio (for example), but your choice of roles as well as instructions suggests it's not what you want. Right?

Anyway, the Prevent short GK distribution makes little sense and is likely to be fairly ineffective when you have less than 3 players up front (preferably 4). And given that you have only 2, I would advise against using it. 

Correct, I'm looking more for attack-minded football than defensive. Normally I prefer in FM 4 man defences but with Inter I do think the starting squad suits a 3 man with WB's currently and its something I would like to try using (as IRL - although the LWBs aren't good enough).

A thought I had was to push the 2 WB's forward, maybe with Hakimi as a Winger and Perisic/Young as a defensive winger, or move to having an AP/AM just behind the 2 strikers so the formation is more 3412. 

Something like this for the 3142 in terms of roles (I haven't adjusted any Tis):

And along these lines for the 3412: 

Edited January 10, 2021 by MrWhite09

[Experienced Defender]

In the first 3412 tactic (with the flat midfield 4 and no WBs), I see that you are still using the Prevent short GKD instruction, even though you still have only 2 players up front. 

As for the rest of that particular tactic, the overall balance of roles and duties looks okay. Mine would probably be slightly different though, but okay. 

In terms of instructions, I don't see why you want to use the Regroup TI in a tactic that is supposed to be attack-minded? I personally would not use either Regroup or counter-press in this kind of formation (both can be left unselected). 

The overlap TI can make sense in formations with only 1 wide player per flank only if you use it to adjust those wide players' individual mentalities, rather than creating actual overlaps (because there is no fullback or wing-back to make those overlapping runs). 

The other tactic (5212) looks less solid overall IMHO, especially in terms of the balance between roles and duties. For example, the right flank/side is a bit too shaky, whereas the left is a bit too conservative. 

[Riziger]

He did say that ti has been left untouched yet. 
 

I’ve found using both tactics that you need very good cbs to pull this off. Even with both flank players as dw and a holding bwm or anchor, when I played against 433 or 4231 teams roughly similar level or better to my team, the outer cbs struggle with always being 1v1. 
 

be curious to see how it goes with inter though 

[MrWhite09]

I've made some updates to the roles and changed the TI's. On the two outside CBs I have added stay wider to try and encourage them to move out a bit and hopefully the HB can help support the CB in the middle. I think the CBs should be good enough (hopefully) for this tactic, although Bastoni still has some development to do.