3 at the back - anyone having success?

[Domoboy23]

Was wondering if anyone was having any success playing three CB's? Struggling to make it defensively solid

[phnompenhandy]

I'm still in pre-season. Not successful but keep tweaking to improve it.

Small improvements appear to have occurred for me by changing the roles to wide defenders on the left and right (never done that before) and having 2 DMs sat in front of them.

[zindrinho]

3 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

Small improvements appear to have occurred for me by changing the roles to wide defenders on the left and right (never done that before) and having 2 DMs sat in front of them.

DMs, or sitting/holding CMs, this is a good setup for keeping possession. WBs on attack, Wingers on support and you're through them like a warm knife through butter  

[shakey.bridge]

I'm doing well with 3 at the back, always been a back 4 man before, but changed because of the squad I've got. I play with a BPD(C) in the middle and WCB(D) either side. obviously the right attributes, role suitability etc are needed.

[CalumF]

I tried a 3 at the back with Sheff Wed on the Beta. Was fired after 29 games being in 7th place.  Restarted with Wed again with a mix of 4231 and 433 and finished 2nd in the first season. I found I was getting a lot of possession and very few shots. Being a promotion favourite team with 3 centre backs didnt work for me. Felt I needed that extra player further up the field. Its all depending on how you set up your team though. Everyone's different. Look at Spurs in real life. Its negative football, not great to watch, but if you can set it up correctly, can still get a result here and there. 

[phnompenhandy]

3 hours ago, CalumF said:

I tried a 3 at the back with Sheff Wed on the Beta. Was fired after 29 games being in 7th place.  Restarted with Wed again with a mix of 4231 and 433 and finished 2nd in the first season. I found I was getting a lot of possession and very few shots. Being a promotion favourite team with 3 centre backs didnt work for me. Felt I needed that extra player further up the field. Its all depending on how you set up your team though. Everyone's different. Look at Spurs in real life. Its negative football, not great to watch, but if you can set it up correctly, can still get a result here and there. 

I did same as you before I fired up my 'real' save. I took a club and it's squad and experimented with tactics, got sacked, restarted and experimented more, rinse and repeat.  After playing over a hundred games this way, I have got a Back 3 formation to work. But it is extremely dependent on your specific players so what works for me won't work for you. But in essence, it's a back 3 with 2 DMs covering, short passing, low tempo, flexible structure dominating the middle of the park and on Balanced mentality to keep it all tight.

[JPKD]

3-5-2 with a holding midfielder has taken me top of the Championship in to the World Cup break with Boro on a run of 7 clean sheets in the league currently. I've got a WCB-S with the dribbles more train (Matt Clarke) who leads the Championship for most dribbles. I love seeing him stride in to midfield with the ball. As you might expect the defence have a load of high average ratings. I'm getting no joy with ratings for the DM, even though Johnny Howson does a good job of covering the adventurous WCBs. 

[VeniVV]

So long as your tactic includes pressing, it should be okay. So long as you tweak roles accordingly. Formation is secondary to pressing instructions. 

[phnompenhandy]

1 hour ago, VeniVV said:

So long as your tactic includes pressing, it should be okay. So long as you tweak roles accordingly. Formation is secondary to pressing instructions. 

Not true at all. My squad doesn't have the conditioning to press all the time. I found the right formation and instructions to win without pressing.

[crusadertsar]

17 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

Not true at all. My squad doesn't have the conditioning to press all the time. I found the right formation and instructions to win without pressing.

Ignore him, he is posting the same thing about pressing being the only way to go in the game in multiple threads on here. Just trying to get a reaction out of people.

[VeniVV]

8 hours ago, crusadertsar said:

Ignore him, he is posting the same thing about pressing being the only way to go in the game in multiple threads on here. Just trying to get a reaction out of people.

Aye. Was seeing red last night. Not my finest hour.

[deorvd]

Just restarted my third "first season" with Inter Milan just try to find a plug and play 3 man at the back tactic, but seems like I have failed again. It's easy to get possession than goals. I do get decent chances, but less goals. Now I'm stuck against Liverpool in CL. At least, they beat me 2-0, mostly 4 goals.

I'm playing touch on Nintendo switch lite tho. Seems like AI has big problems here on switch. Defenders make so many stupid mistakes, like won't chase the ball back

[crusadertsar]

50 minutes ago, deorvd said:

Just restarted my third "first season" with Inter Milan just try to find a plug and play 3 man at the back tactic, but seems like I have failed again. It's easy to get possession than goals. I do get decent chances, but less goals. Now I'm stuck against Liverpool in CL. At least, they beat me 2-0, mostly 4 goals.

I'm playing touch on Nintendo switch lite tho. Seems like AI has big problems here on switch. Defenders make so many stupid mistakes, like won't chase the ball back

There are no more plug and play tactics in FM. Certainly not plug and win. You can't just leave your tactic unchanged against all competition.

Edited November 16, 2022 by crusadertsar

[deorvd]

2 minutes ago, crusadertsar said:

There are no more plug and play tactics in FM. Certainly not plug and win. You can't just leave your tactic unchanged against all competition.

Yes I know I realized that too since last year. At least, I still had better percentage of winnings. Maybe it's just bad AI for switch version now. I've been trying to win the game against Liverpool at Anfield for 5 hours now and it's already 5am lol. I've always lost the next games against Atalanta and Liverpool at home too. They have average more than 20 shots so far and all my players seem unmotivated now.

Nobody really press opponents, CBs always lose their man no matter what I instruct them to (what's worse is when dealing with through balls or long balls, they only move when attackers already have the ball), they get intercepted easily and we mostly have up to 5 shots at max per game. Even fans newsfeed are saying is there any defenders out there lol. Life's hard for touch players these years. Without reloading the game over and over, my winning rate is only around 40% due to AI errors. I've tried with other formations too.