Andrew Marines

Yeah, i set it when i use a CM-a in a 442. It doesn't work really well but it makes the connection with the flank a bit more easier

While i agree with you on most of the things you said, a WB-auto with get further forward and cross less often will play quite close to a wb-a but without all those crossing. With those PIs it becomed my favourite role. For the right WM maybe he could use an inverted wingback in the spot right just over the wingback. But anyway, with a wm-d with stay narrow you should be able to create something like that, at least in the final third

Could be a 3 at the back and he want to press high. There are a few cases you can do that

I made this on FM20 and explained it in this post Defensive phase needs to be improved but you can get great results

I know it's only an headline but what do you think about what they said about FM23? They talked about being able to defend in other ways but we found out that you already can. It'll surely be a bit more complicated but it doesn't seem much like a feature

Edit: Added Mark Tighter to central midfielders. This instruction will help closing the center a lot more. Without you could see their midfielders eventually finding a pass. With it it's a lot more rare

You should post your training routines and the intensity you set-up for your players(under individual you can see it)

Yeah, they can happen. That's why i specified that defenders gotta be smart and fast. they gotta be positioned well and ready to recover those

Watch the defenders spoiler. That is a 4231. The AM(LR)s need to go inside and close those passing lanes. Same with a 433. If i didn't know how to write/read, i'd just go into a full match, and try to get what we asked for. I would probably ask the wingers to mark the position and leave the single striker/AM(C) alone to decide what he should do and in case change it based on the opponent

Mark player means that your player will mark the opponent everywhere in the pitch. Mark specific position means that your player will mark a player that is in the specified position. If nobody is there he'll stay in his designated area. There are situations where this doesn't work 100% but it's still useful. Probably gonna do a bit more research about the different marking systems and post here again

Yes! That is correct. We're trying to not get the ball into our middle but we don't want them to mark those players all the way!

I just didn't have enough space for any attachments so i didn't put them. All 4 have those marking PIs on their side

We're all already familiar with gegenpress/high blocks. It works and all but if you watch IRL(or in the game), you'll see there are moments where a team doesn't press high. We already saw the awesome guide by Cleon about the Low BLock, here i wanna talk about one of the tactics i was developing: a 442 Mid Block. Let's start with the basics and after let's get into the FM world(i'm gonna use some pics from different websites) Mid-block is called like that cause it focuses on the middle. Easy enough. The goal is to protect the middle third of the pitch. Being compact both laterally and vertically, delay the opposition's attack and try to start a counter. FORWARDS: They need to know when to press and when to just close passing lanes In the england formation you can see the forwards closing passing lanes. The goal is to not make them get the ball in the middle of the pitch. Sides are okay, middle is not. MIDFIELDERS: They gotta work with the defensive block a lot. You can see how close they are to each other. They need to hold position and, even if the opponent's midfielder get the ball not make him get forward. The goal is to make him go back or try a long throw at the sides. DEFENDERS: Working with the midfield block, they are high in the pitch and will leave a lot of space for long passess. They gotta be smart and fast enough to recover. This is just a training so it's exaggerated. But still we can see even in real matches how high they are. What happens when the ball get to the sides? The entire team will get into that side of the pitch closing the ball carrier. Now we should be able to understand what we're trying to do. Make them go forward enough, get the ball and try to counter while still not getting deep enough to make them get into dangerous zones. As any defensive style in football, you can't play mid block all the match, all the matches. There are moments(for example while you're losing and don't have that much time) where you need to switch to something more offensive. That's totally fine. Boring part for a part of you done, let's get into FM. I'm not gonna explain the in-possession tactic so i'm not gonna show roles or tactical instructions. You can play a tiki-taka even if you're using a mid-block. That's not important. Let's start with the basic formation. Remember, roles will say how you attack the shape how you will defend generally. As we saw into the previous screenshots, we still gonna press when it's time, we're just not gonna do it all the time and not on all the players. You can see how we're forcing them to get the ball back to the defender or try a risky pass. But, even whey they get back, there's not much they can do. What happens when they lose the ball? In this situation, we defended correctly and made them go into a wider zone. Here they didn't have space but the player still decided to try a risky pass that our fullback reached. You can see now, even if the counter didn't score, they weren't in position to recover. If you try it yourself with what i shared with you, you're not probably gonna see the same defensive movements by the forwards and the wingers. Why? Because i added an undervalued PI to them: MARK SPECIFIC POSITION. Left forward Right winger Even with lower pressing line and stay narrow, you'll see that they still tend to not do anything and just wait. we want them to be included in the defensive phase and help us. This is when this instruction goes in. They will mark the players that goes into that space. In this case, it helped a lot cause, even if the midfielders got back to a defensive position, they won't mark them all the way and just close passing lanes when they are and aren't there. Wingers will usually stay more narrow while forwards will close passing lanes more effectively. You can use a mid-block even in a 4231 or any other tactic. I used it even in a 343. Why don't give it a try?

It can't be by definition. You're waiting for the opponent to attack you. If you go a goal down and the opponent decides to not attack anymore you lose. This "works" in FM cause the AI is bad and it doesn't understand how you're playing.

Yeah, i know, Just wanna clarify it another time cause it's not that intuitive for everyone

@Cleon's comment is great and he's right about a lot of things. But, hear me out. Counter-attacking is not a full time plan to use. You can use it the same while while winning/losing but you won't see the same results every match cause it depends a lot on the opponent too! Imagine you're losing 1-0 and the opponents decide to not attack anymore. You're waiting for them to try to pressure you but they won't, losing time. It's situational and should be used when you have a strategy for the match. Even in real football, teams that adopts this type of tactic, have a plan B if it's not working or switch through them during the match, trying, for example, to exploit when the opponent is tired. Making an example IRL, Sampdoria prepared the match against Juventus a month ago in this specific way: they started with their usual 4231, switching between an high press and a 442 mid-block. After they scored, they didn't even bother attacking anymore. Stayed on the 442 mid-block knowing they don't have a fast midfield or a defender that brings the ball out of defense efficiently. As Cleon said, you gotta have the correct players and the main thing is to have a shape that can support it. Now, you have 2 options: Use the defensive shape in your tactic(easier). For example, you wanna position in a 442 while defending. You just set it up as a 442 and develope it; The second option that is a lot more difficult to implement is to set up your build-up formation(for example, start with a 4231) and use the OI and PI of the players. With the lines of pressing, mark specific roles/players and pressing intensity your players will be able to create different defensive systems that will even adapt during the game(i will make a guide on this in the near future). Remember tho that there's not a single way to defend for a counter-attacking system. You can defend with a low block, a mid block or even an hybrid system. Now, you know how to defend and are doing it correctly but hey, how do i counter? If you tick that in transition option called "Counter" the players will automatically raise their heads and see if they can actually counter. This doesn't mean they will do it everytime!!! You can raise the probabilities that they do it by placing the players in the correct position or letting them the freedom to be creative. Raising the mentality for example will make them play more risky but you can get different results using for example dribble more or play long passes in the PI section. Obv, if you wanna play with long passes, you gotta have someone that can hold the ball efficiently and wait for the team to start runs, if you wanna dribble you gotta have players that can actually do it. This is not either correct or wrong. Counter will still happen if you have that ticked. Play out of defense will just tell players in build-up to play for a build-up from the back and not for a long pass. Juventus for example tends to play from the back, make the opponent pressures them and, after that, make a long pass. In possession=/= Just got the ball

Personal experience, you'll find a lot of issues with the flanks. IW will stay too wide a lot of times. For the mezzala don't worry, it'll be good if you have 3 defenders and a dlp-D.

The first one when i asked you to guess was just to prove that the passmap you sent can't be used as an evidence(and honestly, even in your screenshots i can't really find a big difference). Why are you seeing the CMLR a bit more wide/narrow? Other than a bit of random deviation tha is fine, Cause you're asking them to build up a bit more through the flanks/center and they try to provide passing options to the players with the ball moving a bit more to that part of the field. The only proof you want is to screenshot the field when your team has the ball. You'll see they won't change their position accordingly to the team width but they'll try to watch more the part of the field you're asking them to play into

Okay, let's try then with a stupid try. We'll use the same tactic with extremely wide and extremely narrrow against each other. I'm not gonna tell you which one is wide or narrow. you're gonna guess. It's the PI to set how much wide will the player be. Let's take the winger(7 red) for example Extremely wide: Extremely narrow: See how there's no difference? and seems like a bit wide the extremely narrrow is.

Thanks for the heads up about the years. I didn't remember exactly. Wingbacks are usually playing in the front 5. I though about using wingers in the CM strata but i needed this tactic in an online competition and wingbacks are easier in the game to make track down the pitch. As i wrote into the post, I used the principles of Nagelsmann with the basics of positional play. It's not entirely based only on the real tactic

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Last year, while watching Bayern i was amused by that 343 that they were playing. I know they didn't play as best as they could have(especially with VillaReal) but that tactic kept coming into my head. That day it started the creation of this tactic( I haven't copied it entirely tho. I've tried setting it up as a positional play). Let's start from the basic: This tactic is a lot more easy as people would expect it to. 3 CDs and a single pivot while the other CM plays in a more advanced position. The defenders are free to push up into the field to create overloads and space for their teammates: AM(RL) are usually narrow. They play in the half-space and support both the build-up and the striker. Wingbacks play a lot wide and highe up on the pitch. They provide width(this could be exploited by AM(RL)) but not help a lot in the build-up phase. Probably now you can understand why this didn't work 100%(i'm not saying it doesn't work watch out): This requires a lot of technical and decision making abilities. The moment any of your players make a mistake, it could lead to an easy goal for the opponent. Recreating this in football manager wasn't easy. We faced two main issues: but right now i think this is close to what we wanna obtain. Let's start with some screenshot and a bit of explaination. This is usually what our tactic looks like in an early phase. We can see the players dividing themselfes in the correct spaces. As we said, all of the 3 central defenders are free to get further forward with the ball: This creates a lot of issues when facing mid blocks. An opponent needs to go mark the defender and this open the space for another pass. In both screenshots we can see how the AM(RL) drop to get the ball but are always ready to exploit the opposition's defence: This creates overloads that make the opposition's defence to shift into that side of the pitch: When we finally get into the final third, our team plays as a 2-3-5 or a 2-2-6, with the defender(the one on the same side of the ball. If we're in the middle it's usually a 3-1-6) that acts as a midfielder: When we get there, the ritmo is usually low except if there's a good killer ball. Wingbacks don't want to cross instantly. We don't want to cross by the byline cause all defense is already set up at this point. this is when the defender is important. We use it as an half-space midfielder that can retain possession and switch it to the other side. he can play a killer ball or a simple pass. It's his choice. You need to be the better team to make this work as intended so i won't attach any results i got with this. This is just to see amazing actions and plays by our team. In a comment, i'll attach two-three videos of the results. TACTIC:

No, it's mostly a focus on where to get the ball to. Even @Rashidi and Evidence Football manager talked about this in their videos. Other than the fact that i created a script a while ago on heatmaps and tried with different widths. That showed no results