Adapting and Countering Stronger Opposition

[Jack722]

P1 - Scouting & Preparation

In my current save I am playing as Southampton in the Championship. We are one of the strongest teams and are expecting to finish in the play-off positions, so naturally we tend to play most games our own way on the front foot. However, my next game is against Leciester - who are huge favourites for the title.

Leicester are currently first in the league and are on a very strong run of form. Meanwhile, we are fourth and rightfully labelled slight underdogs for this fixture.

In order to get a better idea about how Leicester play, I pulled up the data hub page, and selected four graphs that I thought best illustrated what to expect from them:

Here we can essentially deduce that they are en extremely good possession-based team. They complete far and away the most passes in the league according to the Passing Dynamics, and as seen in the Pitch Tilt Most of these passes occur in the opposition final third. Aerially they complete very few headers, meaning they like to keep the ball on the ground and probably work the ball in to the box for chances. And finally, in Team Defending they have a low OpPPDA (Opposition passes per defensive action), meaning they likely press very high.

Leciester's expected tactic is a 4-3-3 What's most interesting about this though is that neither of the fullbacks are conventional. Justin on the right will invert into midfield and Doyle on the left will join the centrebacks to form a back 3:

This system works quite well for if you want to keep possession, a back three with a double pivot in front is very difficult to press, and it allows for a lot of numbers centrally for progression through the middle. It looks like the two centre mids, especially the right side - will get forward in and around the striker, and the two wingers will likely stay wide, since there is no support from fullback (although the left IF will probably try to come central from time to time).

In terms of personnel, Leciester have some very strong players, but there are also a few weaknesses we may be able to exploit.

The main player to single out is certainly Harry Winks - who is expected to start at DM. His attribute spread is absolutely perfect for a deep-lying playmaker in a possession-heavy system - which is one of the most important roles for dictating play and assisting playing out the back. I have already highlighted some of the key attributes that he scores high in, and he also has the player trait to dictate tempo. 

However, it's clear that defensviely, he is not the best. His tacking, jumping reach and strength are all significantly lower than his more on-ball attributes.

I won't go in too deep on all the players, but I'll leave below some general notes on the rest of the team:

 

Some things we can note from this:

• The quick attackers means we need to be very careful about pushing our defensive line too high. 
• Both wingers are very dangerous with high pace and dribbling, but are playing on the opposite side of their strong foot with no support from fullback and no obvious target in the box to aim crosses for.
• Dewsbury-Hall has very high ability all-round, but no obvious strength or weakness. He needs to be monitored as the game goes on.
• Vestegaard is a giant with ecellent passing ability, however he is very slow and may be prone to be caught on the break  - especially if leciester push high up as we expect.

 

P2 - Gameplan & Tactics to follow..

 

Edited September 20 by Jack722

[Medio Volante]

Good read so far 

[Jack722]

P2 - Gameplan (1/2)

We already noted that Leciester's main man to facillitate a possession game and dominate the ball is Harry Winks. So the cornerstone of our gameplan is to block off the centre and stop play going through him. Since we are also a strong team, and at home, it may be possible to go man-for-man and press the straight from the goalkeeper in buildup, but this is a tiresome and risky tactic. Firstly, they may have the ability to play through us anyway, and secondly if they decide to go long, they can open up the possiblity for a footrace with Vardy (15 pace) against one of my centrebacks - which I do not like.

I think the most sensible option for now would be to sit in a midblock, hold our shape, harrass Harry Winks, and allow their centrebacks to have the ball with no option to go forward. Once they lose the ball, we should break with pace and aim to exploit Vestegaard's poor mobility and Wink's questionable defensive ability.

One thing we can do to help create this is by setting the following instructions as per below:

 

Centrebacks: Closing down Never; tight marking Never. Show on to outside foot

Keeper: Closing down Never; tight marking Never

Winks (DM): Closing down always; tight marking always

We have played the whole season so far in a 4231 shape, and I plan to keep the shape due to it suiting my players and keeping up familiarity. Luckily, we have a CAM who is naturally going to be near Winks, allowing the tight marking and closing down on him to be more effective. Unfortunately, as we already discussed earlier, Leicester RB (Justin) is expected to play as an inverted wingback, and likey find himself next to Winks in a double pivot.

As you can see, this completely ruins our plan of block play coming in to midfield. Leicester will have a 2v1 in their defensive midfield area, and since we have instructed to mark Winks tightly, James Justin (RB) is going to be wide open for the pass every single time. To fix this without changing our formation, we need to set our left winger to man mark Justin.

If we man mark Justin in the centremidfield, Leicester suddenly don't have any easy balls forward. We've allowed them a 3v1 in their defensive third of the pitch, which is fine since we don't want to press the centrebacks anyway. This sacrifice has allowed us to sit close to every other player, hopefully forcing the CB's to pass between each other for large portions of the game before trying something more risky and losing the ball. 

TBC..

 

Edited Saturday at 09:17 by Jack722

[Luizinho]

Nice write up so far. Really enjoy this kind of strategy in FM.

I like the use of the tactics board too, nice way to visualise a system and how it matches up. Where did you get those from? 

Interested to see how you implement a mid-block counter-attacking style, particularly to a 4-2-3-1.

[Jack722]

P2 - Gameplan (2/2)(Cont.)

After focusing on Leicester's defenders and midfielders, we needed to look at their front three, who pose a different set of problems. Since his title winning days, Jamie Vardy has lost a little bit of pace - but has still retained enough to be very dangerous runnning in behind. Interestingly though, he seems to have matured into a bit of an all-rounder and has no particular strengths or weaknesses. These players are always difficult to plan for, and if you shut down one part of their game, they will punish you with another. We can stay tight but he may beat his defender for pace, or we can stand off and let him pick out a pass or shot.

 

However, their two wingers both have the same sort of profile. They have very good pace and dribbling, but arguably lack a bit of end product.  You can see in the image that Vision and Mentals are weaker areas of their game. I have also noticed that their passing and crossing aren't very dangerous - particuarly with them both playing as the lone widemen and on the opposite side to their strong feet. The most important thing to worry about here is 1v1 duels and balls in behind.

 

In terms of strategy we cannot let our fullbacks be beaten 1v1 by Leiester's wingers. If we can stay in front of them and shuttle them out wide onto their weaker foot, they will offer very little threat. To do this we can set the closing down instructions on the wingers to never, as well as show onto weaker foot for both. Due to Jamie Vardy's all round ability, all we can really do is trust our two centrebacks to deal with him and for our overall strategy to limit supply towards him.

 

Since Leciester are going to try to exploit the 1v1 duels down the flanks, we need to make sure our fullbacks are up to the task. Unfortunately due to an injury crisis, we only have one player who can play right back. But Luckily our right side should get a bit more support from our right winger, who should have light defensive duties due to his opposite fullback inverting into the defensive line. The biggest problem is certainly our left-hand side, since our left winger will follow his man and defend the centre so The 1v1 between Fatawu (RW) and our LB will be a key battle in this match.

I have some concerns about our first choice LB, Ryan Manning. He only has 11 pace, and since all the space will be out wide, all Fatawu would need to do is knock the ball past him to be in loads of space for a cutback. Our normal backup, Juan Larios, is only 19, and slightly worse than Manning at almost everything. However, Larios is much faster and actually matches Fatawu for speed. Larios clearly is the better option to shut down a winger of Fatawu's profile.

 

Edited Saturday at 09:17 by Jack722

[Vizzini]

Interesting.  When you tell your players to never press the wide men, does not that give them the opportunity to just run straight to your goal, should that not be coupled with tight marking, so that they cannot run as freely? I must admit that OI's causes me confusion. 

[Luizinho]

Have you considered 'Easy' tackling on both wingers?

Would likely help them to not get completely beaten in any 1-one-1 situations

[Jack722]

On 27/09/2024 at 12:04, Luizinho said:

I like the use of the tactics board too, nice way to visualise a system and how it matches up. Where did you get those from? 

Thanks! I believe it’s called tacticalboard.com

11 hours ago, Vizzini said:

Interesting.  When you tell your players to never press the wide men, does not that give them the opportunity to just run straight to your goal, should that not be coupled with tight marking, so that they cannot run as freely?

No, I think that the opposition instructions are labelled wrong. The players will still close him down if they really have to. Otherwise the instruction is pointless, because the centre backs could dribble all the way forward and take a shot as well. It’s the same sort of thing with man marking, the player doing the marking will focus on his man for most of the match, but will help out elsewhere if absolutely needed.

2 hours ago, Luizinho said:

 

Have you considered 'Easy' tackling on both wingers?

 

Yeah I suppose that would also be a good option, I imagine they will stay on their feet more and be easier to recover.