I am using ZaZ's Blue 2.0 in my online MP game with friends using Man Utd. We are into the 4th season (my team came 2nd in previous three - Liverpool dominating). We are now in Dec and so far the results are spectacular. 13 wins (including 10 straight wins) 1 draw 1 loss, conceded only 5. The directness and counter attacking are a joy to watch.
I have been reading a lot of posts which suggest strikerless is a cheat or OP under the current ME. I think it is important to try to understand why strikerless (in general) and the layout in Blue 2.0 (or Phoenix) work well.
In my view there are 3 reasons: (i) full field coverage (ii) resulting in high interception rate and quick recycling and (iii) quick and direct attack.
Full field coverage
This is easy to understand once you consider the layout. Broadly speaking you can divide the whole pitch into 25 squares (excluding GK): 5 horizontal layers with 5 spaces for a player to be positioned. Blue 2.0 / Phoenix has basically all 25 squares covered in light of the player movements following their role setup:
Defence: IWB - BPD - BPD - IWB
DM: [IWB] - DLP - [IWB]
CM: W - [IWB] - CM - [IWB] - W
AM: [W] - SS - [CM] - SS - [W]
AF: [W] - [SS] - [CM] - [SS] - [W]
* Those in square brackets are where the player roles will move the player from their default position in normal gameplay.
High interception rate
Full field coverage coupled with high urgency/pressing means, in simple terms, your opponent player or the ball passed by your opponent will have a greater chance of being hit by your player across the whole field. Therefore resulting in the higher interception rate.
Quick and direct attack
Extremely high tempo + take more risks result in fluid counter attacking style. Therefore I think this formation works best if your opponent is attacking you, although it may come into difficulty against a team that parks the bus in which case you need to slow down tempo and lower LOE to draw your opponents out a bit to create space in the final third.
Why strikerless
Technically it is wrong to call it strikerless. Because I (and I assume many others) do play strikers in the two SS positions. More accurate description is playing with withdrawn strikers. Why is that more effective than having the two strikers in their usual position upfront? I think that is because of two things: (i) having the strikers in the withdrawn SS position will draw your opponent's CB further from their defence line, thereby creating more space for the risky passes; and (ii) crucially (and I think this tallies with reality) it is easier for a striker to run towards the goal from deeper position but facing the goal, then to have the back facing the goal upfront having to wait for the ball to be passed to him and then turn and run towards the goal, because the turning always takes up time and in turn gives your opponent more time to regroup. Therefore pace and acceleration matter so much in the formation. You need quick strikers/attackers who can start running towards the goal from deep to catch risky passes from the wingers and the central midfielder.
In fact during the attack phase at most there are 5 attackers in the opponent's final third: W(s), SS, CM(a), SS and W(s) up against the usual flat 4 defence, that is also why the CM(a) tends to score a lot in this formation (with his other 4 teammates dragging the 4 defence players out or aside).
Not a cheat
Once you understand the mechanism it would be unfair to call the formation a cheat. The formation simply makes perfect commonsense. But STILL requires the right players. A true cheat formation is one where you can put ANY player in it and still succeeds. One example is (I wonder if any of you recall) the DIABLO tactic in the Championship Manager days. That is truly a cheat because even if you put a defender in the AMC position he will still score A LOT and EVERY TIME the team only knows how to play a long ball from the two full backs and somehow your opponent does not know how to intercept the AMC.
The above are my personal take on Blue 2.0/Phoenix and generally on strikerless. It may be wrong and the formation creators may correct me but these are my views from a user's perspective. Once you understand how it works, you will then enjoy seeing it in action more. Have fun!
I am in a game using Man Utd with friends and into 3rd season. Came 2nd in the first two seasons. Liverpool (playing 4-1-2-1-2 wide diamond) with Haaland, Fati, Salah and Odegaard upfront are scoring for fun. I started playing strikerless towards the end of season 2 and just managed to beat Liverpool 3-2 in community shield in season 3. Hurray. Seems that my friend still doesnt quite know how to deal with strikerless ...
Question for advice: I have 80m in my transfer pot and I would want to buy a SS (my current SS are Demir, Greenwood, Joao Pedro and Van De Beek which lack a bit of sharp edge). I have a choice of: (1) Dybala (2) Giovanni Reyna (3) Bellingham. Who should I snap up? The only slight complication is that the first two both asked for non-negotiable promises which I cannot quite fulfill (e.g. playing them as AP).
Mr ZaZ - I am writing to both congratulate you for the wonderful formation and to thank you for your effort in fine-tuning it. I just used your v2.2 for Man Utd against a human controlled Liverpool team (which dominated our game with Fati, Haaland and Salah scoring like fun) in season 3 and beat them 3-2 in Community Shield - my first silverware! Would have won 3-1 had I not had Skriniar sent off in 86 mins for bad tackle. Our defence is tight [despite all the "take more risks"] and the counter attack is just impossible to deal with even though we have such low possession %. [Btw I am playing against a Liverpool team using 4-1-2-1-2 wide diamond and which scores on average 120 goals per season.]
I have two questions for you.
First, do you think it is advisable to move the CM(a) to AM position and deploy him as AP(s) - in between the two SS - and move DLP(s) to CM and deploy him as either DLP or BWM? The reason is that whilst the CM(a) generally does very well (I have Kessie and B Fernandes rotating) the DLP(s) does not do so well and often has very low rating (even though I already have Camanviga). I wonder if that has to do with the DLP(s) not being required to do a lot in recycling possession because he is assisted by the two IWB in that area, and I think in FM players are largely rated by how "busy" they are in their positions. But my concern is that using AP(s) may slow down the pace because AP tends to hold up the ball and look for chances to create openings, and this goes against the directness in your formation.
Second, do you think it is possible to adapt your tactic into a possession-based one by lowering the tempo and using low block? Whilst I love the way the team plays and the directness, I always feel I am taking a risk against another direct-play team, or those weaker teams which park the bus.
Once again, many thanks for the great work. Much appreciated.
Btw, my current starting eleven are as follows: (don't know how to screencap)
Demir -- Greenwood
Lemar --- Kessie --- B Fernandes
Camanviga
Telles - Koulibaly - Skriniar - Kounde
De Gea
Kessie + Camanviga in the center is just wonderful because of their high work rate and tackling, suit the pressing style very much. B Fernandes on the right wing can fully utilize his creativity (he has good crossing too). Kounde retrained as R-IWB and I think it is a masterstroke because he has excellent heading and passing and very decent pace, whereas Wan Bissaka is more defensive and less creative.
I have been reading a lot of posts which suggest strikerless is a cheat or OP under the current ME. I think it is important to try to understand why strikerless (in general) and the layout in Blue 2.0 (or Phoenix) work well.
In my view there are 3 reasons: (i) full field coverage (ii) resulting in high interception rate and quick recycling and (iii) quick and direct attack.
Full field coverage
This is easy to understand once you consider the layout. Broadly speaking you can divide the whole pitch into 25 squares (excluding GK): 5 horizontal layers with 5 spaces for a player to be positioned. Blue 2.0 / Phoenix has basically all 25 squares covered in light of the player movements following their role setup:
Defence: IWB - BPD - BPD - IWB
DM: [IWB] - DLP - [IWB]
CM: W - [IWB] - CM - [IWB] - W
AM: [W] - SS - [CM] - SS - [W]
AF: [W] - [SS] - [CM] - [SS] - [W]
* Those in square brackets are where the player roles will move the player from their default position in normal gameplay.
High interception rate
Full field coverage coupled with high urgency/pressing means, in simple terms, your opponent player or the ball passed by your opponent will have a greater chance of being hit by your player across the whole field. Therefore resulting in the higher interception rate.
Quick and direct attack
Extremely high tempo + take more risks result in fluid counter attacking style. Therefore I think this formation works best if your opponent is attacking you, although it may come into difficulty against a team that parks the bus in which case you need to slow down tempo and lower LOE to draw your opponents out a bit to create space in the final third.
Why strikerless
Technically it is wrong to call it strikerless. Because I (and I assume many others) do play strikers in the two SS positions. More accurate description is playing with withdrawn strikers. Why is that more effective than having the two strikers in their usual position upfront? I think that is because of two things: (i) having the strikers in the withdrawn SS position will draw your opponent's CB further from their defence line, thereby creating more space for the risky passes; and (ii) crucially (and I think this tallies with reality) it is easier for a striker to run towards the goal from deeper position but facing the goal, then to have the back facing the goal upfront having to wait for the ball to be passed to him and then turn and run towards the goal, because the turning always takes up time and in turn gives your opponent more time to regroup. Therefore pace and acceleration matter so much in the formation. You need quick strikers/attackers who can start running towards the goal from deep to catch risky passes from the wingers and the central midfielder.
In fact during the attack phase at most there are 5 attackers in the opponent's final third: W(s), SS, CM(a), SS and W(s) up against the usual flat 4 defence, that is also why the CM(a) tends to score a lot in this formation (with his other 4 teammates dragging the 4 defence players out or aside).
Not a cheat
Once you understand the mechanism it would be unfair to call the formation a cheat. The formation simply makes perfect commonsense. But STILL requires the right players. A true cheat formation is one where you can put ANY player in it and still succeeds. One example is (I wonder if any of you recall) the DIABLO tactic in the Championship Manager days. That is truly a cheat because even if you put a defender in the AMC position he will still score A LOT and EVERY TIME the team only knows how to play a long ball from the two full backs and somehow your opponent does not know how to intercept the AMC.
The above are my personal take on Blue 2.0/Phoenix and generally on strikerless. It may be wrong and the formation creators may correct me but these are my views from a user's perspective. Once you understand how it works, you will then enjoy seeing it in action more. Have fun!
Question for advice: I have 80m in my transfer pot and I would want to buy a SS (my current SS are Demir, Greenwood, Joao Pedro and Van De Beek which lack a bit of sharp edge). I have a choice of: (1) Dybala (2) Giovanni Reyna (3) Bellingham. Who should I snap up? The only slight complication is that the first two both asked for non-negotiable promises which I cannot quite fulfill (e.g. playing them as AP).
I have two questions for you.
First, do you think it is advisable to move the CM(a) to AM position and deploy him as AP(s) - in between the two SS - and move DLP(s) to CM and deploy him as either DLP or BWM? The reason is that whilst the CM(a) generally does very well (I have Kessie and B Fernandes rotating) the DLP(s) does not do so well and often has very low rating (even though I already have Camanviga). I wonder if that has to do with the DLP(s) not being required to do a lot in recycling possession because he is assisted by the two IWB in that area, and I think in FM players are largely rated by how "busy" they are in their positions. But my concern is that using AP(s) may slow down the pace because AP tends to hold up the ball and look for chances to create openings, and this goes against the directness in your formation.
Second, do you think it is possible to adapt your tactic into a possession-based one by lowering the tempo and using low block? Whilst I love the way the team plays and the directness, I always feel I am taking a risk against another direct-play team, or those weaker teams which park the bus.
Once again, many thanks for the great work. Much appreciated.
Btw, my current starting eleven are as follows: (don't know how to screencap)
Demir -- Greenwood
Lemar --- Kessie --- B Fernandes
Camanviga
Telles - Koulibaly - Skriniar - Kounde
De Gea
Kessie + Camanviga in the center is just wonderful because of their high work rate and tackling, suit the pressing style very much. B Fernandes on the right wing can fully utilize his creativity (he has good crossing too). Kounde retrained as R-IWB and I think it is a masterstroke because he has excellent heading and passing and very decent pace, whereas Wan Bissaka is more defensive and less creative.