[The Art of Counter Attacking]

Copying Cleon's detailed system is the last thing that you should do. If, as you say, you have "thoroughly read" this thread then you should understand that Cleon is trying to get the principle of counter attacking football across - not putting a tactic up to copy.

Actually, he creates a naked 4-1-4-1 with no specific team instructions. In which he promises counter-attacking football. But that's not how the tactic works at all.

[The Art of Counter Attacking]

Cleon,

This tactic outlook you gave was abysmal for me. I picked the weakest team in the German Bundesliga and gave this tactic a go with the same setup you used after thoroughly reading this thread. The results speak for themselves, ignore the last 3 games because I was sacked after that very last loss. Ironically this team I was managing, Darmstadt, is suited very well to run your setup. Not only are all the players natural in every position required in this tactic, but they even thrive in these roles. Darmstadt is a team which has top 5 for teamwork, work rate and strength across the league. This tactic, or outlook you created, worked pretty well defensively although it was completely lackluster going forward. Most of the games I only lost by 1 goal, or at the most 2. But we only scored 6 goals in 14 games. There were no injures or any other reasons why the team should have performed so abysmally. For instance, this tactic was 100 % known by the very first Bundesliga match. What was disappointing was not only the results, but the overall lack of counter attacking football. Only a single game did we score from a counter-attack. While only 3 or 4 chances were created from counter attacking in 14 matches! Even though the results were terrible, it felt like the team was defending itself pretty well and the opponents had to rely on their individual skill beating our players rather than their tactic beating this tactic. It doesn't seem that you can create a tough, strong and hard-working team in the FM16 match engine, nor one that relies on counter-attacking as its basic principle.