Full Backs + Wing Backs

Admins - If you do test this, please test the standard version! A test would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

First things first, if you just want to look at screenshots of how this tactic performed in my testing, the links below will take you to a bunch of pictures.

All tests were done on holiday mode. An editor was used at the beginning to set team familiarity to full and to heal all players in the squad so the season was started in peak condition.

All tests were conducted with the base tactic, when in reality you'll use all three especially with smaller clubs like West Brom where the Cautious version would be used frequently.

Liverpool - 111 goals in the league, only 11 conceded. 4 trophies in the bag including taking the Champions League with an 8-0 win over PSG in the final.

Leicester - League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup. Best attack in the league, 2nd best defence in the league. 60 goals in 58 games for Vardy!

West Brom - Despite using the standard tactic in every game, when if I were managing I'd have used Cautious in at least 50% of matches, West Brom still finished 10th, 10 places ahead of their media prediction. Only side outside the top 7 to have a positive goal difference and had the 5th fewest XG Against in the league.

Now, on to the tactic itself.



I'd like to say that there is a philosophy behind it, that I was trying to achieve a certain style of football, but I'd be lying if I said that! The reality is that this tactic started off as a 4-4-2 with my Sunderland side. We had a major injury crisis and had no strikers who even knew which direction the goal was in so I stuck two AMC in there. The defensive structure mostly just came out of frustration with wingers not involving themselves in defence, and so out of desperation I decided to throw four wide defensive players on to the pitch and it somehow worked! Defensive stability and still a decent attacking threat.

What kind of players should I pick?

As with every tactic in FM, pace is king, at least one fast shadow striker is essential. Defensively you'll want an anchor man who can head well as they are vital for cutting out attempted balls over the defence.

Other than that, just go for the best players you can for each role!

Should I use opposite footed players (left footer on the right, right footer on the left) for the IWB roles?

Probably.

Personally I don't pay any attention to what foot my wide players use and the tactic still works well for me! Opposite footed players may work better but you'll have to experiment with that yourself.

When should I use each tactic?

Standard tactic - Games where you expect to be able to win.

Cautious - As the name would suggest, this is primarily for games where you are the weaker team by some margin. The big changes are setting the mentality to cover, changing the anchor man to a half-back, dropping the tempo by one notch and adding in a little bit of timewasting.

I also switch to this in the last 20 minutes if we're winning by a couple of goals, and in the last 10 minutes if we're only up by 1. This tactic is hard work for the players so slowing it down a bit at the end helps see out games when your players are tiring.

Attacking - I never start games with this tactic. I use it as a counter-punch tactic, if we concede a goal which puts us behind I'll switch to the attacking tactic for 5-10 minutes in an attempt to hit back straight away, then drop back to the standard tactic.

What training schedules do you use?

I use the training schedules by RDF which you can find here.

Summary

If you've read this far, thank you!

This is the first tactic I've shared online, it probably isn't great but it's worked for me at Sunderland and worked well in my testing so maybe it'll give you some success if you try it.

Please ask any questions you have, and if you do test it I would very much appreciate some feedback.