Familiar with Unai Emery's Valencia?

[michelco]

Then help me out as I want to recreate his tactics in FM09.

First of he uses three formations, 442, 4231 and 433 but I want to concentrate on the 4231 as this is the formation he uses when all is fit. In FM we can play the 3 wide or tight, Unai definately plays them tight.

--------ST---------

--AMCl-AMC-AMCr--

-----MC--MC-------

FB---CB---CB---FB

Sort of like this. The ME translates the three AMCs really well in that when AMCr has the ball on the right wing the AMCl comes inside in the space and such. Can be really beautiful football to watch. Now we have the formation down. However this is where it all gets blurry for me.. Valencia under Unai plays some kind of counter-attack football but when controlling the ball in the opposition third they play around with it, trying to force an opening with clever, defence splitting runs from the AMCs. Now, David Villa is a peculiar target man. Yes, he's a target man. Often a long ball will be played out on the opposition flank with Villa latching on to it (this often happens on the left flank) he then stops the ball, cuts inside and look for a through ball to one of the running AMCs. If you watch Valencia often you'd see that this happen so regularely that it must be a coach decision. Sometimes Villa would run with the ball, again cutting inside and takes a shot. Does this translate to target man ticked, run onto ball distribution and himself run with ball often, through ball often, long shot mixed, forward runs often? It would take quite a player to make use of all those instructions in the right time.

The rest? Well I'm looking for you guys who's watched Valencia this year, you will help me translate Unai into FM. Tempo, passing style, width, mentality is where I'm lost.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! (The editors have Unai playing a 433 like last year with Almeria but his style have changed with Valencia so the editors are of no help)