FM 2013 Tactics Review: Eoin’s Arsenal Tactic

It’s Saturday so we have another analysis of a FM 2013 tactic! This time we’ll be looking at a tactic that was submitted for review by one of our readers, Eoin Cowen. But before going into the  actual tactic review, let’s remember the testing procedure:

We install the tactic and use it through pre-season plus six league matches with Spurs. Then we watch each match closely, see what happens and come up with the best review we’re capable of. We will also keep track of various statistics in order to be able to compare the essential numbers between this and other tactics that have been or will be analysed. It is more or less like a benchmarking tool for FM 2013 tactics.

Now let’s see what Eoin’s FM 2013 tactic is all about.

Formation

Eoin has been using this tactic with Arsenal, so the formation pretty much replicates the Gunners’ set up. We have a flat back four, an anchor man in front of them, two central midfielders with different roles (a deep lying playmaker and an advanced playmaker), two wingers and an advanced forward.

Team Instructions

The tactic uses fluid style with an attacking strategy, short passing and lots of creative freedom, just the way I like FM 13 tactics :) The right side central midfielder is set as playmaker, no designated target man set.

Average Positions

The shape of the team looks fairly compact, the defensive line pushes pretty high up while the two wingers are pretty close to the striker. The front trio get lots of support from the MCR who often pushes forward and sometimes acts like a secondary striker. The DM is key to defensive balance, always plugging the holes that might appear in front of the back four.

Defending

The four defenders form a perfect line in front of the penalty area, quite often trying to leave the opponents offside. The two wingers will track back most times when the opposition full backs advance while the two midfielders press the opponents but not as much as the DM who is some sort of a pitbull chasing just about everything that moves in front of the defence (see screen shot above).

Attacking

The tactic creates pretty enjoyable football when going forward, mostly thanks to the right side central midfielder. The screen shot above shows the MCR, Dembele in this case, moving forward with the ball in a central area while the striker creates room for that run by dragging the centre backs into a wider position. The two wingers keep the full backs pinned to the corners of the area, while trying to move into good positions. In the case illustrated above the MCR entered the penalty area and took the shot himself, but there were plenty of other options available as well.

A good example is a goal scored by Adebayor against Aston Villa at the end of a fine team move:

Results

The results were good overall, just three goals conceded and a solid 1-1 against Manchester United. The defeat at Swansea was more of an accident to be honest, the goal came as a result of a terrible mistake in defence, the right back passing the ball straight to the opposition striker. However, that match saw the weakest display in attack from Spurs out of all the six games.

Statistics

Goals scored: 11 (1.83 per game)

Goals conceded: 3 (0.5 per game)

Shots on target for: 7 per game

Shots on target against: 2.5 per game

Clear cut chances for: 1.33 per game

Clear cut chances against: 0.5 per game

Half chances for: 1.16 per game

Half chances against: 1.16 per game

Ball possession average: 53.83%

The numbers show that this tactic creates good ball possession and a good number of shots on target and chances. The number of goals scored was pretty good too but the opposition had a bit more chances than I would have liked them to. If you are interested in comparing the various tactics we have tested you can do that in the new FM 13 Tactics Index page, there’s a sortable table in there that I’m sure you will enjoy.

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Good possession.

Solid results, except the accident at Swansea.

Quite a few moments of flowing football created, thanks to the four man upfront. The screen shot below shows the left winger cutting inside and having quite a few options to continue, and such moments were present in most of the games.

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Quite a few chances against, most of those from set pieces.

Can be exposed to counter attacks on the flanks.

Striker is instructed to shoot from distance often, which leads to wasted attacks. In the screen shot below Adebayor shoots even though passing short to Dembele would have been a far better option.

Suggested Tweaks

Defending set pieces, especially corners, need sorting. The two centre backs are set to mark tall players and I would set a couple more players to man mark instead of the generic «go back».

I would restrict the shooting from distance to rarely for the striker and even for the wingers.

I would change the cross ball instruction for the wingers from often to sometimes.

FM 2013 Tactic Download

Download this FM 2013 tactic by clicking on the image below:

After downloading the tactic follow these simple steps to install it in FM 2013:

1. Put the downloaded file into this folder: Documents>Sports Interactive>Football Manager 2013>tactics

2. Start your game and go to your team’s tactics screen.

3. Click on the little arrow located to the right of your starting tactic name, move your mouse cursor over “archived tactics” and select this tactic from the menu.

I hope you enjoyed this review and I’m looking forward to your comments. We won’t be taking any more entries from you at this point because the waiting list has gotten a bit long. Here’s how it looks at the moment:

1. Karl

2. Shubhayan

3. Poobington

4. Kevin

5. Jayshamji

6. Carver07

7. Igor

8. DavidNRAdamson

9. Torgnyson

10. Ryan Daly

11. Aleksandar Kiselinov

12. Bigmac

13. Vinay

14. Mantorras77