It’s time to review FM 2013 Tactics again, this week we take a look at Jonathan Carver’s 4-3-3 tactic (or 4-3-2-1 if you want) which he designed for Manchester City during his network game battle with Gaurav in our forum. But before going into the actual tactic review, let’s recap the testing procedure for those of you who don’t know all about it by now:
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 Jonathan’s FM 2013 tactic is all about.
Formation
The formation is a fairly common 4-3-3 with a flat back four, three men in the middle of the pitch, two wingers and a poacher. The central midfielder had a deep lying playmaker role while the other two will be workhorse box-to-box midfielders.
Team Instructions
The tactic uses balanced style with a standard strategy, but the players are instructed to play direct and press the opponents. Overall it is a no-nonsense direct-playing tactic that can be very effective, especially in attack. It also puts most opponents under a great deal of pressure thanks to the closing down that the midfielders and wingers perform in the opposition half. The deep lying playmaker is automatically designated as the team’s playmaker, no designated target man.
Average Positions
The average positions show a pretty compact outfit, not much space between the lines and a dangerous looking trident upfront. However, you can notice that the two centre backs are not on the same line, the right side CB had a fairly higher position on the pitch during that particular game. The team doesn’t use the offside trap but that’s not the reason for the different positions. This tactic uses man marking and that centre back was dragged out of position quite often by the opposition striker.
Defending
The defending side of business reveals that we don’t have a flat back line, the four defenders are positioning themselves more or less depending on the man they have to mark. The three central midfielders always contribute to the defensive effort through pressing while the two wingers will chase down the opposition full backs on most occasions.
Attacking
The attacking force of this tactic is pretty heavy, mostly thanks to the three men upfront. The direct style often catches the opposition unprepared, as shown in the screen shot above. In that situation one of the central midfielders received the ball quickly from one of the defenders and he had a great option to pass for the right winger who had acres of space in front of him. Needless to say this move brought us a goal, scored by Aaron Lennon. However, Lennon also had the option to square it for either Defoe in the middle of the area or Bale at the back post.
Results
The results were good overall, could have been better but we were quite unlucky against Wigan as they scored on their only shot on target. Except that match we scored plenty of goals but also let in a fair share. We conceded 2 against Swansea and Chelsea and that was not an accident as those two teams caused us the most problems with their ability to pass the ball plus the constant movement of their attackers, which created danger due to our man marking system.
Statistics
Goals scored: 14 (2.33 per game)
Goals conceded: 7 (1.16 per game)
Shots on target for: 5.83 per game
Shots on target against: 2.66 per game
Clear cut chances for: 1.5 per game
Clear cut chances against: 1 per game
Half chances for: 1.33 per game
Half chances against: 1 per game
Ball possession average: 52%
The numbers show that this tactic creates a fair share of opportunities in attack but the opposition also had quite a few chances, especially Swansea (two clear cut chances) and Chelsea (three clear cut chances), exactly for the reasons that I have explained above.
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No-nonsense direct style, quite effective in attack.
Creates a good amount of pressure on the opponents inside their own half.
Very strong when attacking on the wings, the full back and the winger can create two-to-one situations against the opposition full back (screen shot below)
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High stamina required for the two box-to-box midfielders, those two run backwards and forwards all day long and you can find yourself in a bit of a problem when you have to replace both at half time.
Can be in trouble against teams that know how to pass their way out of your pressing.
The defenders can often be fooled in the central area due to the man marking. The screen shot below shows such a situation, when the opposition left side striker moved back to leave room for a midfielder to advance (De Guzman) and left our Kaboul pretty much stranded. The red arrows show who should be marking who and the overall image shows a real defensive mess.
Suggested Tweaks
Alter the through balls option for the striker from rarely to sometimes or even often. That is because the two wingers often move well without the ball, cutting inside from the flanks, but the striker rarely plays the ball through to them.
I would change the marking from man to zonal, to be honest I would only use man marking on set pieces in both Football Manager and real-life football in general.
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 we already have plenty of tactics on the waiting list. Here’s what’s coming up in the next weeks:
1. Igor
2. DavidNRAdamson
3. Torgnyson
4. Ryan Daly
5. Aleksandar Kiselinov
6. Bigmac
7. Vinay
8. Mantorras77
9. Paris
10. Deano
Steve
28 апреля, 2013 at 06:16
Really enjoying these reviews. Have to wait a few months before I can send mine in!
With a high line would you recommend playing the offside trap?
Would you advise changing the roles of the BBMs to maybe a DM/BWM and a CM with attack?
As the striker could be involved in creating chances would an AF be a better option?
Thank you
Johnny Karp
29 апреля, 2013 at 09:07
High line and offside trap should go hand in hand in my view. The roles of the midfielders are just fine, no objections to the striker role either.
Thomas
29 апреля, 2013 at 01:01
Why would you not play Sandro as the BBM whilst playing Huddlestone as the DLP? Also where is Dembele? You need to rerun this tactic with the correct players in the correct positions.
Johnny Karp
29 апреля, 2013 at 09:06
Sandro is better as a DLP than Huddlestone in my view, but I did play them with switched roles in a few of the matches. Dembele also played in around 4 out of 6 matches.
Thomas
4 мая, 2013 at 20:36
Fair enough… However I do think Sandro would be a lot more effective than Huddlestone as a BBM, Huddlestone is the more creative one, therefore I’d incline him to be my deep lying playmaker instead.
Guess it’s a matter of opinion though.
Johnny Karp
4 мая, 2013 at 20:53
It’s not such a big deal in my view, Huddlestone might be slightly more creative but it’s not like you would compare Xavi with Vinnie Jones here. The screen shot in the post shows just the formation and line up I’ve used for the first game, then I did move them around a bit also considering other factors like form, fitness and morale when picking the first eleven for each match.