[injekted]

Can they be highly successful and dangerous? The reason I ask this is because I'm currently employing one in my current Chelsea game (narrow diamond) and while it's effective, it also has it's draw backs.

I've created a tactic that is fairly similar to what was in the TT pdf under Carlo Ancelotti. Now I'm no FM or tactical noob and I'm not so much asking for help. But more to see if others who have gone with similar formations are having similar issues.

I'm nearly mid way through my 2nd season, as stated above I am Chelsea and have been playing the game using some LLM rules and looking to create a more revised Chelsea side that can produce it's on youth players without the need to have stars in every position.

Anywho; my first season I managed to win the league, made quarters of CL, semi of FA Cup and lost in the 4th round iirc of the Carling Cup against Burnley (LOL). Now my issue seemed to be scoring goals and it cost me many games and dropped points. I usually dominate possession, have good passing completion, and do create a number of chances. I was the joint 2nd lowest scorers in the top 7 in the league. Thankfully I had a very good defensive record and the best in the league, which helped.

I figured some of my issues were to do with quality up front (since I turned off transfers in 1st window). I pretty much played with the default squad. So for my 2nd season I figured I would invest in a little quality attacking wise to help solve my issue. I splashed on Dzeko and Dzagoev in the summer.

So far though, it's not really worked as well as I had planned, nor solved my issue. Once again I'm creating chances, but little CCC. While this season I've also been less dominate in possession and defensively not as strong. I now sit 4th in the league, and am very close to not making it out of my CL group and being stuck playing Europa football.

And for all the shots I do have, I very few are CCC.

My biggest issue has been getting both strikers to click, be it any of my combination's. While getting goals from midfield.

League only stats;

Drogba - 10 games, 3 goals.

Dzeko - 8 (5) games, 8 goals. (Only just started playing well and scoring. Took 7 games before he netted.)

Anelka - 11 (2) games, 2 goals.

Sturridge - 3 (4) games, 2 goals.

Dzagoev - 5 (6) games, 0 goals. 2 assists.

Lampard - 12 (1) games, 4 goals (2 pen), 4 assists.

Malouda - 8 (2) games, 2 goals, 6 assists. (was injured for early season start).

And that is it. It's a really pathetic return by most, who I'd expect more from. Just to note; Lamp's plays CM with attack role. And Dzagoev & Malouda both play AMC, with attack role.

Striker wise, one is usually a Complete forward with attack, the other a Deep-Lying on support/attack. Unless both Dzeko and Drogba play together and both are Complete forwards. Though neither seem to play well together as of yet.

I've tried altering roles, different shouts etc. Still no real change and my season is staring to really fade.

I'm also very reluctant to change my formation, because I like playing without wingers and also wanted to get a good working diamond happening.

So yeah, anyone had similar issues while using wing less formations?

[Novox]

I used to play the Ancelotti Diamond in the first season with Chelsea, and I sort of had the same problem. Drogba and Anelka never seemed to play with the level of teamwork and understanding as they do in real life. I think the root of the problem lies in the way the Preset Values are made for strikers. It seems that they are ideal for any 442 formation, but as soon as you go beyond that they need some major tweaking.


Every time i create a tactic, I decide to modify the strikers completely (and most of the team). I generally make decisions based on general football knowledge so I am going to post up a screenshot of both Anelka and Drogba and the way I have set them up.
Note: Results will obviously vary depending on the way you have set up the rest of your team.



What i did was create a version of the Complete forward / Deep lying Forward combo. Reason why I decided to use Trequartista for Anelka is that the Mentality of the position is more offensive than deep lying forward, but more defensive than Complete Forward. (Deep Lying Forward's mentality is lower than a support Attacking Midfielder, I don't want to seperate my 2 strikers by such a large margin. + this way when i switch to counter, his mentality will shift as well without having to manually change it) I obviously want Anelka to close down the opponents more so that he involves himself in recovering the ball. Since I don't want him leading the attacks, I left his runs from deep to rarely. He is the link between AMC and Drogba (Though small, it is important)

As you see, I am not a fan of the Complete Forward Preset, I tend to always leave their passing at half if I expect them to do any kind of through balls. (I prefer this since I shape most of my strikers based on the Trequartista role and its passing is set to half). I find the complete forward closes down far too much, and after recovering the ball, finds himself out of position, which only makes the loss of possession faster. Since Drogba will be leading the offensive line, I want him to be the one closing down the least of the attacking half, half way is simply a preference. I chose to put run from deep at half so that he leads the line of attack a bit more and finds himself more forward than Anelka. Lastly, I refuse to let him cross or take a long shot unless completely necessary. Since sliders are simply telling the player his priorities, he will cross the ball or take a long shot when he has no other choice, but I dont want him making a habit out of it.

Lastly, I tend to check all of the marking choices manually for strikers even if I am not changing the anything since they ensure that any decisions I make in the Opposition Instructions don't change their marking ideas. I never want to see my strikers man mark.


Some useful links about he 442 diamond you can check out are :
http://forums.fm-bri...p?topic=11053.0
and

Quote

http://forums.fm-bri...p?topic=10297.0
http://forums.fm-bri...p?topic=10198.0
http://www.gameworld...in-translation/
...Especially the first and third ones which specifically talk about Ancelotti.

[injekted]

Interesting Novox.

I try and avoid changing individual instructions these days because shouts then don't take effect on altered players. But it may be something I will look to do if things continue.

Shall look and read over the links also, hopefully find some interesting and helpful ideas.

Thanks.

Edit:

Ah BlueAngel's links. Already know about this, we had a big discussion on this on LosWonderkids together. Working stuff out together. Which has been reflected in what he posted up here (and made to look like all his idea lol ).

[Novox]

lmao np
The reason why I change all individual selections is because the presets arn't reliable enough, neither are shouts. I try to stay clear of them All I tend to do is change the mentality of the players by changing from Control to Counter. The shouts that change individual players sliders tend to be too ambiguous As long as their mentality moves from attack to defend, the rest shouldn't need changing.

[daveccfc]

I played 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 in my first two seasons and conceded 65 & 68 goals respectively.  In my 3rd season, I switched to a narrower 4-1-3-2 and only conceded 48 goals (and won promotion to the PL in the process), which I think I can attribute mostly to this formation.  The only time I play a bit wider is to counter a 4-5-1, where a tightly mark the AML and AMR or when a team seems to be playing down the flanks a lot.  I think if you defend the middle well you keep your goals conceded down considerably.

[injekted]

Quote

lmao np
The reason why I change all individual selections is because the presets arn't reliable enough, neither are shouts. I try to stay clear of them All I tend to do is change the mentality of the players by changing from Control to Counter. The shouts that change individual players sliders tend to be too ambiguous As long as their mentality moves from attack to defend, the rest shouldn't need changing.

Aye, I used to always do individual instructions but as the games progressed each year and seasons started to take longer to do, I got lazy and just have a more global setup. Plus I find shouts work well enough, when you of course select the right ones. Just a matter of reading each game and how it unfolds. Spotting the oppositions weak points and exploiting them.

[internazionale]

I too am using the narrow diamond. I have all my players on normal mentality because I don't play a direct game. The diamond packs the middle so I just get my players to knock it around the park until an opening shows up. However since I use Arsenal and they have good players, they are capable of counter attacking on their own as well.

I also don't see the need for such a creative front 3. Why have 2 complete strikers or 1 complete and 1 deep? You already have a creative amc and striker. All the other players in the midfield just needs to be good at passing and keeping possession until the amc or the deep striker can do a through ball or run at the defense. This frees up the other striker to not be so involved with the buildup but concentrate on being dangerous when the team has the ball. In my game I have Adriano as my poacher and even though he hasn't scored as much as the amc or forward, the opposition pays a lot of attention to him as he sits on the shoulder of the defense. This is really helpful in creating gaps as he has good off ball movement.

My setup has
Arshavin at the amc spot with playmaker attacking 5apps, 3 assists, 4 goals, rating 7.96
RvP deep lying forward support 5 apps, 4 assists, 9 goals, rating 8.72
Adriano as poacher 5 apps, 4 assists, 3 goals, rating 8.26

I think Drogba is perfect as a poacher. Kinda like what he does in real life. Except he is more complete than say Owen. Have both strikers on move into channels and that opens up the middle a lot. So even though Drogba has move into channels as a poacher he is good enough to dribble or cross.

I have played 11 games so far including friendlies but did beat Man Utd in community shield (2nd season, used a 41221 1st season). The key with the diamond or any other narrow formation is to not have real high mentalities or fast tempo (slow to normal). You don't have the width to stretch the defense and create large gaps quickly to take advantage of. A slow patient buildup is crucial in opening up the defense. In the 4 epl games and community shield so far, I am getting 3-4 ccc a game. At least 3 every game actually. In Man Utd game I had 5 because they were so attacking.

Just another thing to note is in that Man Utd game, they had 59% to 41% possession. We had roughly same amount of shots but they dominated midfield in that game. I knew I would not win the possession battle against the very wide man utd formation especially since they bought Ribery. So I made sure that they didn't pass the ball infield often and channeled them down the flanks as I was confident my CB (Fazio) and DMC (Annan) can beat them in the air. Another thing narrow formations need, cb's who are good jumpers. Their wingers and fullbacks passed to each other all day and didn't create anything apart from long headers and shots. I had my crew hit them on the break and created heaps of good chances. Just goes to show that the ME doesn't cheat. You can do the same as well.

I know there is another way to get my tactic working against good teams without playing so negatively but I had just created the tactic and have never made a diamond before. Didn't want to take any chances cos I never want to lose to my rivals. Hopefully once I understand the defensive side of the formation better I won't have to give away so much of the ball against better teams.

[Soul]

I use a narrow diamond and enjoy great success. I will briefly go through how I look at it in a moment, but first I'd like to clearify:

1, I manage IFK G�teborg in the Swedish premier division. It's not exactly teams of premier league quality that I play against.
2, I'm midway into the 2019 season (it's spring/autumn seasons in Sweden) now, so I've been able to build a squad that is FAR TOO good for Sweden, to the point where it's almost rediculus. The team is ranked top20 in the world (club stature, that is) and the players are worth 10 times that of the opposition...

However, since I've had some pretty succesful runs in the Champions League and Europa League I believe my tactics are zound.

So basically I have two DCs (cover/stopper) and a DM (deep-lying playmaker, defend) that stay back at all times. Their job is to recycle possession and stop any counter attacks. The DM has the ball a lot, so if he got some passing skills that's a bonus.

In front of them I have a line of four consisting of the fullbacks (DR/DL on wing-back, auto), MCr (advanced playmaker, attack) and MCl (deep-lying playmaker, support). The key to get them working well is to allow for more movement than the default settings do. Therefor I've set both MCs to zonal marking, move into channels, roam from position and asked them NOT to hold up ball.

In front of them is a AMC (attacking midfielder, support) with roam from position, and two poachers (yes, you heard me, two poachers).

Since my attackering players (wing-backs, MCs, AMC and STs) are all fast players, I tend to go for fast, direct, counter attacks against difficult teams (like top european teams in the cups), but in Sweden all teams park the bus against me. Therefore I usually keep the tempo down, keep possession, move the ball from flank to flank and rely on the passing skill of my MCs. Sooner or later they find my AMC or one of the STs with a nice through ball, and since they are all fast and good finishers, it usually has the desired outcome.

My best season was 2016, when I won the Swedish premier by 22 points. In 30 games I won 26, tied 4 (so no losses) and had 72-6 in goal difference...

So in short, if you have skilled midfielders and fast attackers, this is a great way of setting up a narrow 4-4-2, imo.

EDIT: Some additional notes for those of you who are employing a narrow 4-4-2. Above you see the player instructions I use, these are the team instructions:

- I only use the contain, defensive, counter and standard strategies. For some reason the control and attacking strategies don't seem to work as well.
- I have manually set the width to wide, otherwise the midfield easily get too cluttered.
- I have manually set passing to shorter, and told them to drill crosses.
- Shouts that are useful are: exploit the flanks (against narrow teams, or when their fullbacks push up), exploit the middle (against wide teams), get ball forward (if they constantly get stuck in the build-up play - giving the opposition time to reorganize), pass into space (lots of possession but no good chances).

[injekted]

Some interesting views, ideas and methods suggested. Which is a interesting and pleasing thing to read. I've just started my 3rd season, will once again keep the narrow diamond but have slightly changed it in terms of player roles.

Will hopefully result in more productivity upfront, while remaining solid and compact in defence. I'm seriously considering playing Lampard as a deep-lying playmaker from CM, set to support. Purely for a few reasons.;

- He's now 33, and while still physically fit. I think it will also benefit him as a player and hopefully keep him fitter for more games.

- He seems to have the right qualities you'd want in such a player. Technique, Passing, Composure, Creativity, Decisions. While still has the quality to finish from distance or in and around the box. Should he ever find himself there.

This will then allow Essien to be a regular CM/Box-to-Box (undecided) and using his power and engine through the middle for the midfield drive.

It then just leaves the DM and AMC roles in the air. Mikel plays in the DM position, now while his states do suit that of a deep-lying playmaker, with a defensive role. He could also be well used as a Anchor or Defensive Mid. The latter roles would offer more defensive cover, but also do kinda kill off any potential attacking influence he may have.

As for the AMC, once again proving to be a fairly ineffective and very inconsistent position. Tried a few roles, none have really excelled. So far it's being occupied by either van der Vaart or Dzagoev, either really having convinced.

While upfront I've settled for Dzeko (Poacher) and Sturridge/Drogba (Advanced Forward). Though, Drogba hasn't really played so far due to injury. He'd probably slot more into the Poachers role, with Dzeko moving to Advanced Forward. However so far Sturridge is doing well and keeping his spot.

Fingers crossed this gets some better improvements.